One Superpower Good for 30 Years
I recently spent 4 days at SoHum with my teacher Kaliji as well as nearly all the teachers who have guided my TriYoga journey over the past 30 years: Kashi, Nandi, Jasmin, Tarini, Chandra, Santoshi and Rishi.
In flowing near and around these incredibly skilled, dedicated and knowledgeable teachers, as well as with people quite new to the Flow, I could see the transformation I have made since meeting yoga in 1993. I arrived stuck and skeptical, overthinking and over-efforting, tight and also weak, rushing and striving, with zero history of interest or talent in physical pursuits.
In the mid 1990s when I met Kashi, the teacher who introduced me to Kaliji and TriYoga, I marveled at the way she and all her dancer friends could move. Most of the students in her classes at the Swarthmore Friends Meeting House were long and lanky, graceful and gorgeous. They could go any direction she guided. I felt sorry for myself. I hadn’t been a dancer. I couldn’t do gymnastics. I wasn’t even good at bowling. I’d been stuck in a back brace for 4 years. Sometimes I got depressed because I had to work so much harder at every posture and was so far from being elegant like them. I wished I had been born flexible.
As I moved up the levels, I encountered a new longing: to be strong. I cried my way through the first nine days of the initial 10-day Level 3 training I attended in Santa Cruz. I was used to my back burning from weakness. I spent at least a decade stuffing pillows between the wall and me when sitting for Prana Vidya or meditation. My focus on the breath in seated practices had nothing to do with reaching higher states of awareness. I was simply trying to hold still until the bell rang so I could bend over and soothe my burning back. Once I got to Level 3, every muscle felt that way. I wished I had been born strong, or at least without scoliosis.
I did not come to TriYoga graced with flexibility. I did not come to TriYoga graced with strength. I did, however, come with one superpower: Steadiness.
As I looked around the room in Kentucky last week, flowing alongside the guides and sages of my youth, I could see how I have come to the perfect amount of flexibility for me. I have grown into a strength that I can stand on, literally. I have cultivated stamina to follow my breath through hours of extended practice. I can track complicated patterns and turns. I can remain calm even in Extended Pyramid, a posture that once required 4 blocks, 3 bolsters and 28 complete breaths– 4 per chakra – to get me through the long Asana without giving up. My staying power has been my saving grace.
On the last day in Kentucky, I rolled up after Deep Relaxation next to a new TriYoga friend who is in his 20s, as I was when I began. He told me of his plan to “keep this snowball rolling” when he got back to Los Angeles. The plan involved 3 hours of practices before going in to work. I didn’t waste a moment with my reply. You don’t have to do that much practice for TriYoga to work. It would be far better to start with a short practice you can keep going than aim for a massive practice that you don’t continue. If you can get going with something every day, the energy will effortlessly increase. You will spontaneously know what to add, and your practice, as well as your life, will unfold beautifully.
Thirty years down the road maybe I will roll up from Deep Relaxation at the end of a long practice at SoHum alongside my new friend, who will be the age I am today. We will turn and bow, thanking our superpower of Steadiness – me for another great 30 years and he for his first 30.
Theresa Shay is the founding director of TriYoga of Central Pennsylvania, where she teaches weekly yoga and meditation online and trains others to teach TriYoga®. Each week, she shares wisdom cultivated from decades of TriYoga study and practice.
Learn more about her here. Theresa can be reached at Theresa@PennsylvaniaYoga.com. Find her on Instagram @theresa_of_triyoga for more inspiration and light.